39 posts in this topic

I must admit, I cannot get a grip on John Galt (as a character). I find him to be more of a place holder for ideal character than a real live life-like flesh and blood person. He eludes my intuitive grasp.

On the other hand Francisco, I get. I have met people like him. He has kind of a wild off center view of the world that I can relate to. Perhaps it is because I have an off center way of looking at things.

I find Francisco's speeches to my liking and understanding too.

Another character I don't get is Dagny Taggart. I simply do not understand how a person of her talent and experience could put up with the crap she put up with for so long. If I had been Dagny, I would have resigned from the railroad after that abominable bond swindle. I could not be associated with a company that could so blatantly cheat people who kept it afloat. To quote Wallace Shawn in -Princess Bride- , Incontheivable!

I grasp Eddie Willers. He is a straightforward decent fellow and I have met his like just about everywhere I have gone. In fact, most of the people I have met are decent and mean well, even when they err.

I have also met Betram Scudder, that is I have met his likeness. I once had a conversation with Michael Moore. Once was quite enough. (Yucch! Pool! Feh!) Ayn Rand hit the mark with Scudder. I imagine she synthesized him from some of the scummier and slimier types that gravitate to Hollywood and the New York entertainment and literary scene.

But John Galt --- I simply cannot grasp in at the level of person, only at the level of an abstraction.

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I must admit, I cannot get a grip on John Galt (as a character). I find him to be more of a place holder for ideal character than a real live life-like flesh and blood person. He eludes my intuitive grasp.

I definitely understand John Galt and Dagny's feelings for him. So many of the scenes -- especially of Galt and Dagny's daily domestic interactions in the Valley -- remind me of the way Stephen and I related to each other.

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I must admit, I cannot get a grip on John Galt (as a character). I find him to be more of a place holder for ideal character than a real live life-like flesh and blood person. He eludes my intuitive grasp.

...

But John Galt --- I simply cannot grasp in at the level of person, only at the level of an abstraction.

Galt seems more of an abstraction than the other characters because he was more of an abstraction. For most of the novel he is described only mysteriously through his effects and by anecdotes ("Who is John Galt?") rather than by characterization psychologically like the other main characters, then by a few relatively few personal exchanges in the valley, with more description of what he had done, then a very philosophically abstract speech, and then reactions in some particular (highly unrealistic) circumstances. There is enough description to grasp what Ayn Rand meant by him as the "ideal man", but he remains relatively abstract as a character. The extent to which anyone can grasp what he means as a person depends on one's own sense of life, personal nature and experience of self, and ability to grasp Galt as real. A lot of people among the conservative and leftists critics of Ayn Rand can't grasp him at all.

On the other hand Francisco, I get. I have met people like him. He has kind of a wild off center view of the world that I can relate to. Perhaps it is because I have an off center way of looking at things.

I find Francisco's speeches to my liking and understanding too.

We can take your word for it that you are "off center" but Francisco? What does that mean? He was extremely purposeful and goal directed with solemn seriousness underlying his overt personality, to say nothing of the "playboy" image he feigned as part of his strike strategy.

Another character I don't get is Dagny Taggart. I simply do not understand how a person of her talent and experience could put up with the crap she put up with for so long. If I had been Dagny, I would have resigned from the railroad after that abominable bond swindle. I could not be associated with a company that could so blatantly cheat people who kept it afloat. To quote Wallace Shawn in -Princess Bride- , Incontheivable!

She put up with it because she had strong personal values she pursued and would not surrender. She didn't think of herself as "associated" with the cheats in TT, but rather fighting them, going around them and succeeding despite them. She despised them and held them in contempt as much as you want her to. She knew that the whole railroad was "afloat" because of her efforts, not the cheats, and she couldn't let it go, unwilling to drop her own values because of the at-root insignificant slime around her. That was the conflict in the novel with those who did go on strike in protest. Part of the tension in that -- for readers with a sense of justice and values adequate to relate to the novel -- is a natural reaction against what she had to put up with and rooting for her to, and wondering when she would, finally revolt.

I grasp Eddie Willers. He is a straightforward decent fellow and I have met his like just about everywhere I have gone. In fact, most of the people I have met are decent and mean well, even when they err.

Eddie Willers was one of Ayn Rand's favorite characters, but I don't think that you are encountering his equivalent as much as you think. He was more than a "straightforward decent fellow" -- he had a strong sense of justice as part of his sense of life that most people today do not.

I have also met Betram Scudder, that is I have met his likeness. I once had a conversation with Michael Moore. Once was quite enough. (Yucch! Pool! Feh!) Ayn Rand hit the mark with Scudder. I imagine she synthesized him from some of the scummier and slimier types that gravitate to Hollywood and the New York entertainment and literary scene.

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We can take your word for it that you are "off center" but Francisco? What does that mean? He was extremely purposeful and goal directed with solemn seriousness underlying his overt personality, to say nothing of the "playboy" image he feigned as part of his strike strategy.

I found Francisco's strategies and tactics rather counter intuitive. But that is often the mark of genius, being counter intuitive. He was a humdinger he was. I have actually met real live people like that. It is a wonderful experience.

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I most understand Hank Reardon. I was raised a Catholic, suffered twelve years of Catholic School - Hobbesian, except for the short part - and tried very hard to take it all seriously and make sense of it. I "woke up" to find myself married, with a family and obligations just like him. (It is no coincidence that the biggest heros - Roark and Galt - spring perfectly made with no actual life "baggage"). What Hank Reardon knows about being a man on earth he learned both by experience and by learning from intelligent people around him. But he would not give his old life up altogether until he knew the truth. His journey is the journey of many of us.

The only other whose journey we see in such detail is Dagny's and it makes all the sense in the world to me that they would be together. The crucial part of both of their journeys they made together and those most intense and intellectually and emotionally shared journeys make a proper relationship, in my view.

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Interests:Intellectual activism (more than anything else), my wife ,Thi(she is a fascinating and lovely person), reading (I like to read investment letters, commentary on current events, texts on philosophical subjects, popular science magazines and spanking erotica (I have a big library of "spanklit", as it is called), going to movies (I like commercial films, which are solely intended for entertainment, I do not think that they make any serious movies of the Atlas Shrugged kind, and I am not interested in seeing lesser serious movies), listening to music (my favorite groups/artists are Madonna, Pet Shop Boys, The Beatles and Blue Oyster Cult, in that order).

I grasp Eddie Willers. He is a straightforward decent fellow and I have met his like just about everywhere I have gone. In fact, most of the people I have met are decent and mean well, even when they err.

Bob Kolker

I suspect that you are misidentifying the nature of those people. Most of the people that I have met over the years here in Sweden are *not* like Eddie Willers. They are instead like the inhabitants of Starnesville. They just cannot be troubled to think. Based on my experiences, something like between 90% and 99% of the members of mankind are like the inhabitants of Starnesville, and are therefore morally depraved in my view. Now, you could ask how I can generalize, and say that the vast majority of mankind must be morally depraved, just because most ot the people that I have met here in Sweden are. After all, could not for example, Americans tend to be better than Swedes? Well, they could, and probably do tend to have better premises, but I think that you would have to be a racist to claim that Americans choose to think more often than Swedes. And when I say that most men are morally depraved, I say that because of the fact that they do not bother to think about abstract subjects, the kind of subjects that it takes real effort to think about.

The choice to think is not influenced by genes or culture. All men are metaphysically the same. So there is no reason to expect that men in any one place or time, will choose to think more often than the men in any other place or time. And I don´t think that there is any signifacant evidence that they ever had. The fact that some cultures have been far better than others, has been caused by the "Moral Minority", by the few individuals who choose to think about abstract subjects.

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I suspect that you are misidentifying the nature of those people. Most of the people that I have met over the years here in Sweden are *not* like Eddie Willers.

And immediately I think "Bob lives in the US"

And so to answer this unspoken note you say:

After all, could not for example, Americans tend to be better than Swedes? Well, they could, and probably do tend to have better premises, but I think that you would have to be a racist to claim that Americans choose to think more often than Swedes.

No. Sweden, and France, and a lot of European countries, have been destroyed by the 19th century German philosophers we all know about since Miss Rand keeps such a special place for them in her books. Remember the last chapter of Philosophy: Who Needs It: America will continue to succeed, in Miss Rand's opinion, because of its underlying culture and roots, based on liberty, not altruism.

This was driven home to me when I read the otherwise extremely leftist Confessions of an Economic Hitman. He says something along the lines of "for those who live in the Mid-West, the US is still a capitalist free country" - and this is true to an extent. The people I have met from the Southern and Central states tend to favour and live by conservative values (although from a religious rather than rational standpoint) and in many ways do match up to Eddie Willers. This is why I am still considering moving to Texas, where I'll be able to go deer hunting with a machine gun on top of an SUV, although my Southern friends think the European accent will stop me from integrating there

The key is that Willers does not "think" abstractly. But he is a good man nevertheless.

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Interests:Intellectual activism (more than anything else), my wife ,Thi(she is a fascinating and lovely person), reading (I like to read investment letters, commentary on current events, texts on philosophical subjects, popular science magazines and spanking erotica (I have a big library of "spanklit", as it is called), going to movies (I like commercial films, which are solely intended for entertainment, I do not think that they make any serious movies of the Atlas Shrugged kind, and I am not interested in seeing lesser serious movies), listening to music (my favorite groups/artists are Madonna, Pet Shop Boys, The Beatles and Blue Oyster Cult, in that order).

The key is that Willers does not "think" abstractly. But he is a good man nevertheless.

I agree with you that Eddie Willers is a decent human being. He is not, in my opinion, in the same category as the inhabitants of Starnesville.

I also think that Americans tend to be better people than Swedes (I have lived in both Sweden and the USA). But the reason that Americans tend to be better people than Swedes is that they have better premises, not that they do more thinking. And the reason that Americans have better premises than Swedes is just *luck*. Americans happen to be born in a culture that is more healthy than the culture in Sweden. So they happen to have better ideas around them that they can learn.

But I do not think that it is a significant virtue to hold a good premise, if you do it as a second-hander, and you were lucky enough to live in a good culture. It is to the credit of the thinkers who created that good culture, not to the credit of the second-handers in that culture, that the second-handers in that culture come to acquire good premises. I think that holding good premises is a significant virtue only if you have acquired them in a first-handed fashion, so that you yourself have control over the process. In other words, it is a virtue to hold good premises, only if you hold those premises because of the fact that they are true, and not just because everybody around you holds those premises, and you just copy them.

By the way, after some further thought, I have to take back my estimate that somewhere between 90% and 99% of all men are like the inhabitants of Starnesville. That is too pessimistic. I think that it is "only" somewhere between 90% and 95% of all men who are that bad. That figure is based on my observation of men around me over many years.

And I think that my estimate is also confirmed by a lot of the reading that I have done. How can you explain human history, if you do not concede that the vast majority of men do not care to think?

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The key is that Willers does not "think" abstractly. But he is a good man nevertheless.

I have known many people like this.

I have to say that as I read Atlas Shrugged I couldn't help but relate to Reardon. In my engineering work I have often followed technical issues with a pure, almost naive nature. I, too, have been subject to white blackmail. I also interact with people the way he does. The early scenes where he's getting brow-beat by his in-laws at the dinner table, unfortunately, were very similar to a period earlier in my life. It, and his behavior, really grabbed me; as did his character development.

When I started reading the Atlas Shrugged I learned that a movie was in the works. After getting a ways into the book I told my wife about this odd desire I had to play Readon in the movie. Sure, it is a pipe dream. But, I've always wanted to try acting. I've done similar work (not to get into the details of that here) and think I could play Reardon. Before this, I had never stumbled upon a charactor that I had any thought of playing. After this realization I learned that Dagny might be played by Angelina Jolie and the idea became a bit of a joke between my wife and I. I have a big crush on Angelina. Oh well...it was a nice dream.

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Interests:Intellectual activism (more than anything else), my wife ,Thi(she is a fascinating and lovely person), reading (I like to read investment letters, commentary on current events, texts on philosophical subjects, popular science magazines and spanking erotica (I have a big library of "spanklit", as it is called), going to movies (I like commercial films, which are solely intended for entertainment, I do not think that they make any serious movies of the Atlas Shrugged kind, and I am not interested in seeing lesser serious movies), listening to music (my favorite groups/artists are Madonna, Pet Shop Boys, The Beatles and Blue Oyster Cult, in that order).

The key is that Willers does not "think" abstractly. But he is a good man nevertheless.

I have known many people like this.

I have to say that as I read Atlas Shrugged I couldn't help but relate to Reardon. In my engineering work I have often followed technical issues with a pure, almost naive nature. I, too, have been subject to white blackmail. I also interact with people the way he does. The early scenes where he's getting brow-beat by his in-laws at the dinner table, unfortunately, were very similar to a period earlier in my life. It, and his behavior, really grabbed me; as did his character development.

When I started reading the Atlas Shrugged I learned that a movie was in the works. After getting a ways into the book I told my wife about this odd desire I had to play Readon in the movie. Sure, it is a pipe dream. But, I've always wanted to try acting. I've done similar work (not to get into the details of that here) and think I could play Reardon. Before this, I had never stumbled upon a charactor that I had any thought of playing. After this realization I learned that Dagny might be played by Angelina Jolie and the idea became a bit of a joke between my wife and I. I have a big crush on Angelina. Oh well...it was a nice dream.

I have a bit of a crush on Eva Mendes. She has such nice flesh. I wonder if she could play Dagny Taggart? Maybe Eva Mendes is not "intellectual" enough? But she´s hot!

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When I started reading the Atlas Shrugged I learned that a movie was in the works. After getting a ways into the book I told my wife about this odd desire I had to play Readon in the movie. Sure, it is a pipe dream. But, I've always wanted to try acting. I've done similar work (not to get into the details of that here) and think I could play Reardon. Before this, I had never stumbled upon a charactor that I had any thought of playing. After this realization I learned that Dagny might be played by Angelina Jolie and the idea became a bit of a joke between my wife and I. I have a big crush on Angelina. Oh well...it was a nice dream.

By the time -Atlas Shrugged- is ready to made into a motion picture or mini-series Dakota Fanning will be considered for the part of Dagny.

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I most understand Hank Reardon. I was raised a Catholic, suffered twelve years of Catholic School - Hobbesian, except for the short part - and tried very hard to take it all seriously and make sense of it. I "woke up" to find myself married, with a family and obligations just like him. (It is no coincidence that the biggest heros - Roark and Galt - spring perfectly made with no actual life "baggage"). What Hank Reardon knows about being a man on earth he learned both by experience and by learning from intelligent people around him. But he would not give his old life up altogether until he knew the truth. His journey is the journey of many of us.

The only other whose journey we see in such detail is Dagny's and it makes all the sense in the world to me that they would be together. The crucial part of both of their journeys they made together and those most intense and intellectually and emotionally shared journeys make a proper relationship, in my view.

Reflecting on this later: I once scandalized a church group by telling them I'd pass up heaven to be a human being forever, even if it meant typically human ups and downs as long as I had my mind and could grow; I'd be Hank Reardon forever as long as I was able to keep the intellectual and moral lessons and victories he won.

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Reflecting on this later: I once scandalized a church group by telling them I'd pass up heaven to be a human being forever, even if it meant typically human ups and downs as long as I had my mind and could grow; I'd be Hank Reardon forever as long as I was able to keep the intellectual and moral lessons and victories he won.

That's beautiful, and a funny thought (as I imagine some wide-eyed, blue-hairs gasping at your comment). "Being a human being forever..." how dare you!

"...having a mind and could grow;" Now, THIS is scandal. I'm tired today because I was at a school district special education meeting late last night. My son, with autism, is about to enter "the system". I'm an informed, hard-headed parent who's fighting for his kid and the administrators already recognize my name. How dare I fight for my son's mind, and for his growth. They actaully expect me to just lay down and take whatever lies they feed me so they can shuffle him through the system. Most parents do. Reading Atlas Shrugged resulted in a paradigm shift for me. The elements were already there, but the book put the pieces together for me. To be open minded, educated, informed and persistent really is rebelious.

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Reflecting on this later: I once scandalized a church group by telling them I'd pass up heaven to be a human being forever, even if it meant typically human ups and downs as long as I had my mind and could grow; I'd be Hank Reardon forever as long as I was able to keep the intellectual and moral lessons and victories he won.

That's beautiful, and a funny thought (as I imagine some wide-eyed, blue-hairs gasping at your comment). "Being a human being forever..." how dare you!

"...having a mind and could grow;" Now, THIS is scandal. I'm tired today because I was at a school district special education meeting late last night. My son, with autism, is about to enter "the system". I'm an informed, hard-headed parent who's fighting for his kid and the administrators already recognize my name. How dare I fight for my son's mind, and for his growth. They actaully expect me to just lay down and take whatever lies they feed me so they can shuffle him through the system. Most parents do. Reading Atlas Shrugged resulted in a paradigm shift for me. The elements were already there, but the book put the pieces together for me. To be open minded, educated, informed and persistent really is rebelious.

Are there no private options?

I've found that, in the UK at least, private schools are a lot more respectful of individualism and the Socratic Method versus force-feeding. And back at mine, we definitely heard the teacher's opinion about certain parts of the curriculum that members of this Forum would strongly disagree with

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As the novel progressed through various characters you begin to see different attributes of Rand expressed in various ways. Rand herself understands the characters too well, it is clear to me that she has parts of each inside her. Including Toohey and in fact maybe especially Toohey.

Watching the one TV interview of her I could find it was clear she was a master of twisting a conversation to whatever her goals might be.

Other characters are pieces of her that are more wholesome. She tries to take different aspects of herself and approach to life and place them inside a character.

I believe John Galt was the only character that did not exist inside as a piece of her. She decided his approach was the correct one through rational thought and not natural occurrence in her personality. Maybe a part of her wished that she was as pure as him. On this I can only speculate, however the larger belief is that he is not a natural manifestation but a desired one.

I think Rand realized that the capitalist and freedom ideals are never 100% economic arguments. After all, an ant colony is a very effective structure. So were the egyptian "gods" building their pyramids.

Just look at her main signature:

"I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows."

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As the novel progressed through various characters you begin to see different attributes of Rand expressed in various ways. Rand herself understands the characters too well, it is clear to me that she has parts of each inside her. Including Toohey and in fact maybe especially Toohey

As someone who saw Ayn Rand in person on many occasions and has studied her carefully for almost 5 decades, I couldn't disagree more. This is psychologizing and way off base.

Toohey's character and motivation were so different from Ayn Rand's that she had to do a lot of research before she could develop the character. See The Journals of Ayn for how she actually created Toohey and what he represents in terms of her own ideas and view of life.

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She tries to take different aspects of herself and approach to life and place them inside a character.

And your evidence for this is... ?

I believe John Galt was the only character that did not exist inside as a piece of her. She decided his approach was the correct one through rational thought and not natural occurrence in her personality. Maybe a part of her wished that she was as pure as him. On this I can only speculate, however the larger belief is that he is not a natural manifestation but a desired one.

[emphasis added]

As opposed to the other assertions in this post, which are based in fact and logic?

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It doesn't seem quite possible to do it any other way. For one human being to understand what goes on in another requires you to run a simulation of sorts inside your own head. This can never be an objective art (with current technology) but you can reach conclusions of reasonable confidence.

The argument is that to discuss the characters so in depth the simulation has to be very good.

See The Journals of Ayn for how she actually created Toohey and what he represents in terms of her own ideas and view of life.

Hm, that sounds like it would be interesting. I observed the Toohey correlation by comparing tricks he performed on characters to tricks Rand performed on the reader.

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Hm, that sounds like it would be interesting. I observed the Toohey correlation by comparing tricks he performed on characters to tricks Rand performed on the reader.

I think this is way off-base. What do you mean by tricked in each case and how are they similar?

From what I've been able to find out over the past 7 years of studying her philosophy (and, in turn, reading LOTS about her), I'm not sure I can think of a more diametric opposite to Toohey than Ayn Rand was. This seems akin to saying that Bill Gates reminds me of Osama Bin Laden because they both made meticulous plans and carried them out -- in other words, in order to see any similarity you'd have to abstract away every meaningful detail about the two.

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Interests:Intellectual activism (more than anything else), my wife ,Thi(she is a fascinating and lovely person), reading (I like to read investment letters, commentary on current events, texts on philosophical subjects, popular science magazines and spanking erotica (I have a big library of "spanklit", as it is called), going to movies (I like commercial films, which are solely intended for entertainment, I do not think that they make any serious movies of the Atlas Shrugged kind, and I am not interested in seeing lesser serious movies), listening to music (my favorite groups/artists are Madonna, Pet Shop Boys, The Beatles and Blue Oyster Cult, in that order).

I suspect that you are misidentifying the nature of those people. Most of the people that I have met over the years here in Sweden are *not* like Eddie Willers.

And immediately I think "Bob lives in the US"

And so to answer this unspoken note you say:

After all, could not for example, Americans tend to be better than Swedes? Well, they could, and probably do tend to have better premises, but I think that you would have to be a racist to claim that Americans choose to think more often than Swedes.

No. Sweden, and France, and a lot of European countries, have been destroyed by the 19th century German philosophers we all know about since Miss Rand keeps such a special place for them in her books. Remember the last chapter of Philosophy: Who Needs It: America will continue to succeed, in Miss Rand's opinion, because of its underlying culture and roots, based on liberty, not altruism.

This was driven home to me when I read the otherwise extremely leftist Confessions of an Economic Hitman. He says something along the lines of "for those who live in the Mid-West, the US is still a capitalist free country" - and this is true to an extent. The people I have met from the Southern and Central states tend to favour and live by conservative values (although from a religious rather than rational standpoint) and in many ways do match up to Eddie Willers. This is why I am still considering moving to Texas, where I'll be able to go deer hunting with a machine gun on top of an SUV, although my Southern friends think the European accent will stop me from integrating there

The key is that Willers does not "think" abstractly. But he is a good man nevertheless.

Every man needs to think "abstractly" in order to live. Those men, and they are many, who do not think abstractly, but who nevertheless manage to survive physically, do so by means of a sort of parasitism on those who *do* bother to think about abstract subjects. Since men *need* to think about abstract subjects in order not to live as parasites, and since most men do not think about abstract subjects, I regard most men as being morally depraved.

And do you *really* claim that Americans choose to think more often than Swedes? That is the logical implication of your "No" above. I have lived in *both* the USA (for 11 years), and Sweden (for the last 40 years, and for the first 5 years of my life). I did not detect any signs that the Americans that I used to live with chose to think more often than the Swedes that I live with today. Most of my classmates in schools were mental dolts, who did not put forth much mental effort.

As for the Eurpean countries having been destroyed by the philosophers - the philosophers did not *force* a single individual to accept their poisonous ideas. The Europeans accepted the bad ideas by choice. The Europeans *let* the philosophers *do it to them*. Ultimately, history comes down to not just the volition of the philosophers, but also to the volition of all the members of the "masses", i.e. of The Immoral Majority.

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Interests:Intellectual activism (more than anything else), my wife ,Thi(she is a fascinating and lovely person), reading (I like to read investment letters, commentary on current events, texts on philosophical subjects, popular science magazines and spanking erotica (I have a big library of "spanklit", as it is called), going to movies (I like commercial films, which are solely intended for entertainment, I do not think that they make any serious movies of the Atlas Shrugged kind, and I am not interested in seeing lesser serious movies), listening to music (my favorite groups/artists are Madonna, Pet Shop Boys, The Beatles and Blue Oyster Cult, in that order).

The 2 characters in Ayn Rand´s novels that I most identify with (which is, of course, not exactly the same thing as saying that they are the characters that I best understand) are Dominique Francon and Gail Wynand.

I identify with Dominique because she is the quintessential "tortured idealist", and for many years I was also a tortured idealist. I am still an idealist, but I do not feel "tortured" sny more, thanks to Ayn Rand, and thanks to the thinking that I have done over the years.

I identify with Gail Wynand, because, like him I was hurt "by the world" when I was young, and afterwards I wanted to fight back by changing the world (well, Gail Wynand did not really want to change the world, he gave up and contented himself with merely becoming its "master", but I do have in common with Gail Wynand the fanatical drive to fight).

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As for the Eurpean countries having been destroyed by the philosophers - the philosophers did not *force* a single individual to accept their poisonous ideas. The Europeans accepted the bad ideas by choice. The Europeans *let* the philosophers *do it to them*. Ultimately, history comes down to not just the volition of the philosophers, but also to the volition of all the members of the "masses", i.e. of The Immoral Majority.

Actually, they did. I do not know about Sweden, but in France global warming is taught in schools as science, and Sartres etc. held up as great philosophers, more "advanced" than the civilization-upholding rationals. Ayn Rand is virtually unknown; the two or three people who have read her will immediately dismiss her for the usual reasons. "Philosophy" is a subject taught even in engineering courses at university. It consists in making you believe the usual stuff - there's no point in thinking, life has no meaning, you are insignificant, men are a collection of chemicals...

Even in the UK, some writers have complained that the government-taught children have become a sort of environmental gestapo, coming back home and guilting their parents into recycling..

That is literally the case. No non-physical component to a human being has been objectively demonstrated. We are made of atoms.

What is NOT the case is --- men are merely a collection of chemicals. The mode of organization of the components counts at least as much as the basic components themselves. A man alive and functioning is not the same as a man scrambled and pureed. Same atoms, different organization.

If an utterance cannot be taken literally, it is not a true statement. It probably isn't even a statement.